


In the Quiet

by roguefaerie (samidha)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Comment Fic, Community: fic_promptly, Cooking, Food, Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series, Prompt Fic, Selectively Mute Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 13:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13077408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: Listen, we all know Dean's the cook when he gets a second to finally relax. Enforced relaxation due to health issues is a definite thing.





	In the Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, we all know Dean's the cook when he gets a second to finally relax. Enforced relaxation due to health issues is a definite thing.

It starts when Dean goes mute again.

Oh, they don't talk about it. They've never talked about it. Sam's too young to really remember the first time it happens, but he knows almost on the level of instinct that it does happen and what to do, as if it's like the fact that Dean knows how to breathe.

And sometimes the muteness seems to stop Dean's breath.

It's stress, or it's Dad, or it's memories, or maybe it's Sam, Sam isn't exactly sure.

In any case, if they have a kitchenette, then Dean quietly cooks.

The first thing he learns is sandwiches, and they get increasingly complex as he ages. If he doesn't have access to a toaster, he figures out other ways to toast bread.

By the time he's a teenager, he has a little bag inside his duffle for kitchen gadgets that fit in a motel room without a kitchen. Hot plate, hibachi, George Foreman grill (when he's desperate and when his dad has tossed out whatever else he had then). 

But when he's at Bobby's and the phones are quiet, he can cook like a real chef. His favorite thing to make becomes lasagna. He learns about baklava after that from a library cookbook, because it is complicated and can keep him in the kitchen all day, and that's the part he likes about Bobby's house when he's not under the car.

The day he serves Sam the first baklava of his life, Sam is bemused, they both know it, but Sam doesn't say anything and Dean is grateful.

Just grateful.

And quiet.

So quiet.

He carries a little notepad for times like this, and he doesn't write long letters, but all the same, his eyes are shining with genuine glee, the kind he sometimes follows with a wink in the right company. And he just writes, "Thanks, Sam," and Sam smiles back.

"Hey," Sam says, "You're welcome, but dude, you made the food."

"And you're gonna clean up," Dean writes.

"I am," Sam says. "This is amazing, Dean. You're really a genius."

"Takes one to know one, College Boy."

And then they eat together in silence, and the look on Sam's face says it's the best meal Sam's ever had.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Dean discovers he likes cooking and spending a lot of time in the kitchen (not the cleaning up though.)


End file.
